Creating A Website On A Budget

Since my new Kosher Workaholic series was born from the feedback and questions I get from my readers and clients, it makes sense to begin the series addressing the most common question, ‘how did you create your website?” and my most common frustration – when I see people and businesses paying exorbitant prices for website services that they can do themselves, for practically free.

Here are some Basic Do-it-Yourself Website Creation Basics.

Basic WordPress

WordPress is the most widely used tool for website creation and management today. It is very professional and technologically sound. You’d be amazed at how many of the leading professional websites are running on wordpress. It is also very current and features intuitive click & drag technology that makes it easy to use even for the most technologically impaired person.

WordPress is an incredibly powerful tool and the basic WordPress from www.wordpress.com is completely free! There are the more professional upgraded Worpdress packages from www.Wordpress.org that require you to host your website yourself (which I discuss below).

If you are a real novice, use the FREE wordpress.com as your training center until you are comfortable with the technology, and then, upgrade to one of these inexpensive Premium WordPress packages.

Premium WordPress Packages

Using the free wordpress.com has serious limitations in terms of Search Engine Optimization (which I’ll write about soon) and limits your ability to generate income from your blog. Therefore, if you want to take your blog or website up a notch an make it truly professional, there are many Premium WordPress Packages, most for under $100 that you can use. My favorite of the Premium Wordpress packages is StudioPress with the Genesis Child Themes. That’s what I used to created The Kosher Shopaholic and it has served me well, especially for Search Engine Optimization. Did you know that 80% of my website traffic comes from Search Engines without me paying an penny for SEO? Its because its built in to the premium wordpress package I use.

A package like the one I use costs about $60-$80 and is simple and intuitive. Like I’ve said, they have SEO built into the design automatically so you don’t even have to worry about this complicated piece of it. All you have to do is select your look & feel, click and drag and, of course, make sure to write your own unique copy. StudioPress has excellent tutorials, help and support in place as well to assist you along the way.

Hosting

Once you begin building your website, if you want to begin making money from it from advertising and affiliates (which I will discuss in a later post), you will need to host it through a third party. I have been very happy with BlueHost to host my site and colleagues have shared with me that BlueHost has been excellent at protecting them from hacking attempts as well. The package I have costs only $10 per month and is incredibly easy to install and use. They also have excellent tutorials and support for the novice users. By hosting your website through a third party like BlueHost, you are also able to have your own domain name, like www.koshershopaholic.com instead of www.wordpress.com/koshershopaholic.

Domain Names

Having your own domain name is much more professional looking and is not as complicated to do as it might seem. To purchase a domain name, go to a site like GoDaddy.com and run a search on the names that you would like to use. If someone else doesn’t already own it, you can buy it strait from GoDaddy.com for $10. You can also purchase your domain names from hosting sites like BlueHost.

So there you have the basics of creating your website on a budget. I wish you much success. Please let me know if this post was helpful to you in the comments section below or by dropping me an email at coach@kosherworkaholic.com. Feel free to ask me any business related question to be answered on the blog for my Coach’s Couch section here.